Bhakti and Embodiment

by Barbara A Holdrege

  Gauḍīya formulations of the embodied aesthetics of bhakti culminate in the vision of an embodied state of realization in which the perfected devotional body manifests on two levels: inwardly the samprāpta-siddha remains identified with the siddha-rūpa, the nonmaterial body of bliss, immersed in the exhilarating streams of prema-rasa, while outwardly the sādhaka-rūpa, the transformed material body, thrills with the intoxicating madness of devotion. The senses and organs of action overflow with torrents of bliss and manifest an array of involuntary physical symptoms, termed sāttvika-bhāvas, that are considered the externalized signs of the internal state of enraptured devotion. The embodied aesthetics of bhakti finds paradigmatic expression in the physical signs through which prema-rasa is marked on the body, such as tears, trembling, bristling of body hair, change of color, and faltering voice.

  Fashioning Social Bodies

  The Gauḍīya discourse pertaining to divine bodies and devotional bodies also serves as a means of fashioning a distinctive social body, the Gauḍīya bhakta-saṅgha, with a unique tradition-identity defined by a shared theological vision, bhakti-śāstra, and a shared system of practices, sādhana-bhakti, that sets it apart from contending philosophical schools and bhakti traditions in the Indian landscape.

  The Gauḍīya discourse of divine embodiment, as we have seen, envisions a superabundance of divine bodies of Kṛṣṇa abounding on every plane of existence: the singular absolute body surrounded by the manifold nonmaterial bodies of its partial manifestations on the transcosmic plane; countless divine bodies abiding within countless cosmos bodies on the macrocosmic plane; innumerable divine bodies abiding within innumerable jīva bodies on the microcosmic plane; and mesocosmic divine bodies mediating the relationship between the transcosmic absolute body and microcosmic human bodies on the mesocosmic plane. However, these multifarious divine forms of Kṛṣṇa are not ascribed equal value but are rather classified and ranked in a multidimensional hierarchical taxonomy. On the one hand, this classificatory schema serves as a means of appropriating and reconciling the competing ontologies, cosmogonies, and cosmologies derived from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and other Purāṇas by organizing them within a single analytical framework. On the other hand, this taxonomy is deployed in the service of the Gauḍīya theology of superordination in which the hierarchizing of divine forms serves as a means of domesticating and subordinating the competing ontologies, paths, and goals propounded by rival traditions.

  The principle of superordination is also at work in the Gauḍīya discourse of human embodiment pertaining to devotional bodies, which delineates a hierarchical taxonomy in which bhaktas are classified and ranked according to the five rasas, or modes of devotional relationship, in terms of increasing degrees of emotional intimacy: śānta-rasa, dāsya-rasa, sakhya-rasa, vātsalya-rasa, and mādhurya-rasa. The taxonomy further classifies and ranks these five categories of bhaktas according to their level of spiritual attainment: sādhakas, bhaktas who are following the Gauḍīya path of sādhana-bhakti but are not yet perfected; samprāpta-siddhas, bhaktas who have obtained perfection and realized the siddha-rūpa through the practice of sādhana-bhakti; and nitya-siddhas, the eternally perfect rāgātmikā bhaktas who reside with Kṛṣṇa in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman and who have never been subjected to the bondage of the māyā-śakti.

  The principle of superordination is also at work in the Gauḍīya system of sādhana-bhakti, particularly in the meditative practices that are ascribed a critical role in the advanced devotional regimen of rāgānugā-bhakti. The early Gauḍīya authorities, in constructing their own repertoire of meditative practices, appropriate certain devices and practices associated with yogic meditation techniques and tantric ritual traditions and reinscribe them as components of a distinctively Gauḍīya regimen in which meditation is re-visioned as a devotional practice.

  Challenging the Discourses of Jñāna and Yoga

  Among contending philosophical schools, the early Gauḍīya authorities deploy their discourse of embodiment to establish the supremacy of the Gauḍīya bhakti-śāstra, discourse of bhakti, over the discourse of jñāna propounded by the exponents of Advaita Vedānta and the discourse of yoga promulgated by the exponents of Pātañjala Yoga.

  The early Gauḍīya authorities provide a hierarchical assessment of the three aspects of the Godhead—Brahman, Paramātman, and Bhagavān—in which they allot the highest position in the ontological hierarchy to Bhagavān and relegate both Brahman and Paramātman to subordinate positions as partial aspects of Bhagavān, and they thereby engage in a polemic that challenges both the monistic ontology of Advaita Vedānta and the dualistic ontology of Pātañjala Yoga. In refutation of the Advaitins, who claim that the ultimate reality is the impersonal, formless nirguṇa Brahman, the Gauḍīyas assert that the highest aspect of the Godhead is Bhagavān, who is beyond nirviśeṣa Brahman and is personal, endowed with an absolute body, and replete with infinite qualities. Brahman, as the lowest aspect of the Godhead, is relegated to a subsidiary status as the effulgence that shines forth from the self-luminous absolute body of Bhagavān. In refutation of the exponents of Pātañjala Yoga, who posit a plurality of nonchanging, formless puruṣas as the highest reality, the Gauḍīyas maintain that all puruṣas are encompassed within saviśeṣa Paramātman, which itself is a partial aspect of the all-encompassing totality of Bhagavān, who is Puruṣottama, the supreme Puruṣa.

  This hierarchical assessment of ontologies has its counterpart in a hierarchical assessment of paths to realization. The early Gauḍīya authorities assert that those who follow the jñāna-mārga advocated by the Advaitins may realize their identity with nirviśeṣa Brahman and those who follow the yoga-mārga advocated by the exponents of Pātañjala Yoga may experience saviśeṣa Paramātman, but only those who follow the bhakti-mārga—and more specifically the path of sādhana-bhakti delineated by the Gauḍīyas—attain realization of the highest aspect of the Godhead: Kṛṣṇa as svayaṃ Bhagavān. While the early Gauḍīya authorities maintain that both the jñāna-mārga and the yoga-mārga are barren if devoid of bhakti, they assign a higher position in their hierarchy of paths to the yoga-mārga, for they view the realization of saviśeṣa Paramātman as a higher state than the realization of nirviśeṣa Brahman. Moreover, they incorporate a domesticated form of the yoga-mārga in their hierarchy of rasas by classifying those yogins who take up a purely meditative form of bhakti as adherents of śānta-rasa, the lowest of the five rasas. However, they emphasize that although the adherents of śānta-rasa may experience Paramātman, the intermediary aspect of the Godhead, in which Kṛṣṇa appears within the heart in his four-armed aiśvarya form as Viṣṇu, they do not attain the highest form of samādhi that involves a direct cognition of Kṛṣṇa’s two-armed gopa form as pūrṇa Bhagavān in Goloka-Vṛndāvana, the transcendent Vraja-dhāman.

  This hierarchical taxonomy includes an assessment of goals as well as of paths, and in this context the early Gauḍīya authorities reject the formulations of both Advaita Vedānta and Pātañjala Yoga. They reject the Advaitin goal of mokṣa, liberation, which is represented as a state of absolute unity in which the jīvanmukta awakens to the reality of the Ātman, universal Self, as identical with Brahman and at the time of death relinquishes the body and all vestiges of personal identity into the impersonal, distinctionless totality of Brahman. They also reject the Pātañjala Yoga goal of kaivalya, isolation, which is represented as a state of absolute separation in which the yogin realizes the puruṣa, Self, in eternal separation from prakṛti and other puruṣas and at the time of death remains in a bodiless state of liberation as pure luminous consciousness. Over against these contending goals of absolute unity and absolute separation, the early Gauḍīya authorities posit a model of realization in which the jīva awakens to its svarūpa, unique inherent nature, and the corresponding form of its siddha-rūpa, eternal, nonmaterial body, and revels eternally in a relationship of inconceivable difference-in-nondifference, acintya-bhedābh
eda, with Bhagavān in which the distinction between the subject (āśraya) and the divine object of devotion (viṣaya) is maintained. In contrast to the formulations of Advaita Vedānta and Pātañjala Yoga, in which the fetters of embodiment are cast off in the state of liberation and all vestiges of personal identity cease, the Gauḍīyas envision the ultimate goal, even after death, as an eternal relationship between persons—the supreme Bhagavān and the individual jīva—each of whom possesses an eternal, nonmaterial body. It is by means of this nonmaterial personal and bodily identity that the jīva relishes for all eternity the exhilarating streams of prema-rasa.

  Re-visioning Bhakti

  The Gauḍīya discourse of embodiment, in its hierarchical assessment of the three aspects of the Godhead and its formulations of the relationship between embodiment, personhood, and materiality, thus serves as a means of domesticating and subordinating the ontologies, paths, and goals of two rival philosophical schools, Advaita Vedānta and Pātañjala Yoga. The principle of superordination is also evident in the ornate hierarchical taxonomy through which the divine bodies of Kṛṣṇa are classified and ranked on the transcosmic, macrocosmic, and microcosmic planes, for this taxonomy serves as a means of accommodating and subordinating the contending notions of divinity propounded by rival bhakti traditions. Among bhakti traditions, the Gauḍīyas distinguish Vaiṣṇavas from non-Vaiṣṇavas, and among non-Vaiṣṇavas they quickly dispense with rivals such as the Śaivas by relegating Śiva to the status of a guṇa-avatāra who occupies a low rung in the hierarchy of divine forms as a manifestation of the second puruṣa-avatāra, Garbhodakaśāyin Viṣṇu, who is himself an aṃśa of an aṃśa of Kṛṣṇa.

  A principal concern of the early Gauḍīya authorities is to establish a distinctive tradition-identity for the Gauḍīya Sampradāya in relation to other Vaiṣṇava bhakti schools—in particular, the Śrīvaiṣṇava Sampradāya established by Rāmānuja, the Brahma Sampradāya founded by Madhva, the Puṣṭi Mārga established by Vallabha, and Rāma bhakti traditions. Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja portrays Caitanya as attracting followers of Rāmānuja and Madhva as well as Rāma bhaktas into his bhakta-saṅgha, and he also describes an encounter between Caitanya and Vallabha. Jīva Gosvāmin, in his concern to construct an authoritative system of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Vedānta in conversation with other Vaiṣṇava schools, quotes frequently from both Rāmānuja and Madhva in the Sandarbhas.

  In formulating the hierarchical taxonomy of Kṛṣṇa’s divine forms, the early Gauḍīya authorities selectively appropriate and recast a variety of Vaiṣṇava and Purāṇic traditions, including the Pāñcarātra theory of vyūhas and Purāṇic notions of avatāra, and develop a classificatory system that reverses the hierarchy in the prevailing Vaiṣṇava paradigms by establishing that Kṛṣṇa, not Viṣṇu, is the supreme Godhead who is the source of the four vyūhas and the avatārin who is the source of all avatāras. The hierarchical system of vilāsas and avatāras, by accommodating within a single analytical framework the various names and forms of Viṣṇu derived from historically discrete Vaiṣṇava traditions, serves as a means of relegating Viṣṇu in all of his forms to a subordinate position as a manifestation of Kṛṣṇa—whether as an aṃśa, or an aṃśa of an aṃśa, or an aṃśa of an aṃśa of an aṃśa.

  The Gauḍīya taxonomy of divine forms of Kṛṣṇa can be fruitfully compared, as we have seen, to Śrīvaiṣṇava formulations concerning the five aspects of Viṣṇu’s divya-maṅgala vigraha, divine auspicious form, which are rooted in Pāñcarātra notions of the five modes of manifestation of the deity: (1) as the para-rūpa, transcendent body of the Lord; (2) as the four vyūhas, divine emanations, Vāsudeva, Saṃkarṣaṇa, Pradyumna, and Aniruddha; (3) as vibhavas or avatāras, divine manifestations at particular times; (4) as the antar-yāmin or hārda, the indwelling form of the Lord in the heart; and (5) as arcā-avatāra, an avatāra in the form of a ritual image. Irrespective of whether the early Gauḍīya authorities were familiar with this fivefold schema, their taxonomy of Kṛṣṇa’s divine forms diverges in significant ways from the Śrīvaiṣṇava formulation. First, in their discussion of the transcendent body, the Gauḍīyas present a sustained series of arguments to establish that the svayaṃ-rūpa, essential form, of the vigraha is the two-armed (dvi-bhuja) form of Gopāla Kṛṣṇa, not the four-armed (catur-bhuja) form of Viṣṇu, which they relegate to the subordinate status of Kṛṣṇa’s aiśvarya form. Second, the Gauḍīyas embed the Pāñcarātra theory of vyūhas in a multileveled taxonomy that distinguishes three different iterations of the vyūhas, correlated with different domains and functions, that are all represented as manifestations of Kṛṣṇa. Third, the Gauḍīyas develop an elaborate system of avatāras that distinguishes among six classes, which are categorized and ranked according to the particularities of their bodily forms and functions. The paramount concern in this context is to establish that all of these classes of avatāras—including the puruṣa-avatāras, which are identified as manifestations of Viṣṇu—flow forth from the inexhaustible avatārin, Kṛṣṇa. Fourth, although the Gauḍīyas concur with later Śrīvaiṣṇava formulations in which the antar-yāmin is represented in an embodied form as the four-armed Viṣṇu bearing a discus, conch, club, and lotus, they insist that this four-armed form is itself a manifestation of Kṛṣṇa in his aiśvarya mode. Finally, the Gauḍīyas concur with the Śrīvaiṣṇavas in ascribing to ritual images the status of arcā-avatāras that are localized embodiments of the deity. However, as we have seen, they also go beyond the Śrīvaiṣṇavas in investing three other forms with the status of mesocosmic avatāras—the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, which is revered as a text-avatāra; nāmans, which are revered as name-avatāras; and Vraja-dhāman, which functions as a place-avatāra.

  The influence of Pāñcarātra traditions on the Gauḍīya discourse of bhakti extends beyond theological formulations into the domain of ritual. The early Gauḍīya authorities’ strategic appropriation and domestication of Pāñcarātra ritual devices and practices are particularly evident in their recasting of the daily ritual regimen for worship of the deity in which they re-orient the entire regimen from a Pāñcarātra form of tantric sādhana designed to construct a divinized tantric body to a Gauḍīya form of sādhana-bhakti designed to fashion a perfected devotional body.

  Reimagining Theories of the Body

  The Gauḍīya discourse of embodiment explodes notions of the relationship between embodiment, personhood, and materiality on both the human and divine planes and thereby challenges not only contending South Asian discourses of the body but also contemporary Western theories of the body in the human sciences. More specifically, the Gauḍīya discourse of embodiment challenges us to re-vision the prevailing theories by positing (1) bodies beyond matter; (2) personhood beyond matter; and (3) gender beyond sex. This is not a call to embrace the Gauḍīyas’ ontological claims but rather, as part of a belated post-colonial gesture, to grant “theory parity”4 to the alternative imaginaries that they propose and to engage them as worthy interlocutors whose theorizing might inspire us to reimagine our own body theories in significant ways.

  In a recent essay Michael Radich has argued that contemporary theories of the body in the Western academy are bound by “materialist” assumptions in which the ordinary material human body composed of flesh and blood with an anthropomorphic shape is the default template for what constitutes the body. After briefly surveying the principal currents of contemporary body theories—including Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body, Foucault’s biopolitics of power, Bourdieu’s logic of practice, and Irigaray’s and Cixous’s écriture féminine—Radich concludes that “these various theories all assume what I am calling the materialist understanding of body.” His justification for this assertion merits quoting in full:

  The bodies they imagine, in the final analysis, are ordinary human bodies: subject to birth and death; gendered; composed of flesh and blood; with two arms and two legs and a head and
a heart and a stomach; able to move, walk, talk, breathe, ingest food, and excrete waste, but not able to fly, or evanesce, or walk through solid objects. This is true regardless of claims that the body is also inscribed with social meanings or otherwise socially constructed, regardless of claims that it is not merely an object of knowledge but an intimate component in the construction of that knowledge, regardless of claims that it is not merely a prior requisite for our being and identity but the very medium and axis of that identity, and regardless of claims that it is not in fact as clearly separable from “mind” as “Cartesian dualism” leads us to believe. It is even true of the most radical claims for the relativity of embodiment to the nonuniversal parameters of culture, gender, class, sexuality, social role, and so on. It is also even true of theories that propose that current modes of embodiment dominant in our societies are repressive and unjust and the means of our subjugation to alienating powers and that therefore agitate for some sort of change in embodiment. Through all these theories one particular body—the ordinary living human body—runs like a relentless idée fixe, and, we might say, the outlines of the ordinary human body demarcate the limits beyond which all such theories will not or cannot think.5

  Radich emphasizes that, in contrast to the materialist understanding of ordinary human bodies that delimits contemporary body theories in the human sciences, most premodern religious traditions posit a range of extraordinary modes of embodiment beyond ordinary human embodiment, which are primarily ascribed to two classes of beings: (1) divine beings or other beings who are identified with ultimate reality; and (2) human beings who have undergone temporary or permanent transformation, culminating in realization of an ideal or perfected form of embodiment.6